Integrated circuit packages are produced for usage in a variety of products or for a variety of applications. For example, integrated circuit packages which are designed for use in military and avionics applications are often required to operate and survive under aggressive or rigorous operating conditions and environments. Because such integrated circuit packages (ex—hermetic packages) may typically be very costly to produce, they are often expected to have a long lifespan (i.e., remain functionally operable over a long period of time), such as for 20 years or more.
Contrastingly, most currently available integrated circuit packages are designed for usage in products which present relatively benign/much less rigorous operating conditions, such as desktop PC's, electronic games and cell phones. Such integrated circuit packages are commonly referred to as Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) devices. Because COTS devices may typically be relatively inexpensive to produce, they may tend to have a relatively short lifespan (ex—2 to 5 years).
In recent years the military electronics industry has sought a less expensive alternative to the high cost integrated circuit packages discussed above, which are currently implemented in highly rigorous military and avionics applications. One alternative has been to implement the currently available (and less expensive) COTS devices, in the more demanding military and avionics environments. However, when the currently available COTS devices have been subjected to these more rigorous conditions, they have been especially prone to failure due to higher operating temperatures, corrosion, or the like. Current methods of modifying or designing integrated circuit packages for improved thermal performance are typically very expensive and may be detrimental to reliability.
Another significant trend that has recently developed in the microelectronics industry is the concentration of higher power onto/into fewer functional areas. On the macro scale, this has led to integrated circuits that dissipate significantly more power than their predecessors, thereby requiring more efficient thermal management. A more significant issue is on the micro scale in which a power on an individual integrated circuit is not dissipated uniformly, but is instead concentrated at hot spots on the die. While the majority of the integrated circuit may be operating at a safe temperature, small hot spot regions may be significantly hotter and may greatly reduce the reliability of the entire circuit. The need to spread this power has, for example, led to increased use of multicore processors in an attempt to distribute the die level power dissipation over larger areas. Existing methods for hot spot thermal spreading, such as Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) diamond films, are very expensive to apply and may significantly disrupt other assembly processes.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a method for providing near-hermetically coated, thermally protected integrated circuit assemblies which address the problems associated with current solutions.